Music Industry Sends a Message To PC Screens: Sharing Is Theft

The record industry started another campaign yesterday aimed at making life more uncomfortable for online music-swapping fans.

Thousands of people trading copyrighted music online yesterday saw a message appear unbidden on their computer screens: ''When you break the law, you risk legal penalties. There is a simple way to avoid that risk: DON'T STEAL MUSIC.''

The messages, which seek to turn a chat feature in popular file-trading software to the industry's benefit, reflect the latest effort among record executives to limit digital copying of their products.

''People feel invincible when they're doing this in the privacy of their homes,'' said Cary Sherman, president of the Recording Industry Association of America. ''This is a way of letting them know that what they're doing is illegal.''

The association plans to send at least a million warnings a week to people offering popular songs for others to copy. Operated by a company that industry officials declined to identify, the automated system uses a feature in both KaZaA and Grokster, free software commonly used to share music files, that was designed to let users communicate with one another.

A spokeswoman for Sharman Networks, the distributor of KaZaA, said that the tactic violated the company's user agreement, which prohibits making search requests to accumulate information about individual users. Sharman, which is based in Vanuatu, a Pacific island nation, said in a statement, ''We strenuously object to efforts outside the law, in violation of user agreements, or in violation of the privacy rights to indiscriminately spam, mislead or confuse'' its users.

Until recently, the record industry has been reluctant to act against the several million people who copy music over the Internet from one another for fear of alienating its own customers. But with CD sales plummeting, the record labels have lately taken a more aggressive stance.

The industry filed lawsuits this month against four college students, charging them with copyright infringement and seeking billions of dollars in damages.

Last week, the industry group won permission from a federal judge to force Verizon to turn over the name of a subscriber it suspects of providing hundreds of copyrighted songs through KaZaA.

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Verizon is appealing that decision, but analysts said another court decision last week might force the industry to focus on file traders, rather than the software they use. A federal judge in Los Angeles ruled that Grokster and Morpheus, two popular file-trading programs, could be used for both legal and illegal purposes -- like a Xerox machine. Because the owners of the software cannot control what people do with it, the judge said, they are not liable for copyright infringement.

''It forces the R.I.A.A. to shift its focus to the actual participants on the network,'' said Phil Leigh, a digital media analyst at Raymond James. ''I would credit them here with taking a step that gets their message in front of users in a fairly obvious way without the terror of a process server at their door.''

Record companies, analysts said, are trying to strike a bit of fear in the hearts of file traders without sowing the kind of hostility that could lead to a boycott or even increased music swapping.

Record industry officials emphasized that the campaign was intended to be an educational effort in line with earlier television ads that featured prominent artists. The record companies cannot learn the real name or address of other users simply by using the instant message feature built into the program.

In addition to warning users about the legal risks of their actions, the message explains that file trading hurts musicians and songwriters. The users are also directed to www.musicunited.net, a site created by supporters of the campaign.

But the record labels still need to contend with the insistence of many file traders that what they are doing is justified by what they see as the industry's failure to lower prices and provide an inexpensive system for downloading music legally.

One frequent KaZaA user, who declined to give his name for fear of the legal consequences, said he would simply check the box in the software that blocks instant messages.

''This is an ongoing war between the community of true music fans against the big corporations that control music,'' said the user, a 34-year-old man in Hicksville, N.Y. ''It's possible that this will scare some people, but it won't scare all people.''